Words are interesting things. Some people call them the atoms of speech and thought. I’m not so sure about that. I think of them more as the bricks, building materials. I see words as rough, big things, not tiny, elemental particles.

We humans have a built-in ability to acquire language and to use it in very specific ways. Take a newborn child from anywhere in the world, move them to another part of the world, and they’ll acquire the local language easily. Research tells us that it takes just two generations to turn any pidgin or creole into a full blown language. It happens naturally. It’s a built-in human facility and it’s fascinating.

New words take on a life of their own, but it’s remarkably difficult for any newly created word to catch on widely. Many have tried, but artificially creating a word and getting it used is difficult.

But it is fun.

For today’s assignment, create a new word, build a definition for it, and use it in a paragraph or short piece.

Think of this as three separate assignments and keep them separate. Have fun! First, invent your word, then create a definition, then write your piece, but do not use the definition in your paragraph or short piece. Let your word do the work.

If you need help, use this word generator to get your mind thinking about word construction.

When you have your word, then develop your own definition and usage and write your paragraph. For my example, I’ve used my creation “postally”, meaning a the quality of a document or surface that is bristling with PostIt notes or flags. And my example.

I found Jeff’s desk a complete postally mess once again. I’m not sure if that means that he’s busy or simply sticky. I spent twenty minutes de-postalizing my desk where he’d left dozens more notes for me, ignoring his requests and assigned to dos. At least when he hands me a document he’s been given to review I can instantly determine the amount of revision necessary by the degree of postallishyness visibly displayed.

Try and use your word in different ways, as I did. See how it changes. Read your paragraph out loud and see how it sounds, feels in your mouth. Play with the word.

What this will teach you: if you do it right, you’ll begin to better understand the basics of grammar and word usage. The rules of the language that you’ve internalized should automatically enforce themselves with your new word. It will look and sound right or it won’t. This type of word play will help you to strengthen your writing skills.

Writing Assignment: Make Up A Word And Use It Correctly is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

I’ve been following the recent articles and reports on Apple and manufacturing in China. I’ve heard some ugly terms thrown about, including “slavery.”

If true, it’s shocking and disappointing. But I fear that it is a mix of hyperbole, cultural differences, and yes, some worker abuses. Apple appears to be doing the right things to improve conditions, but that cannot overcome the differences in culture and economic realities. I suspect, from first hand accounts I’ve heard, that things are not nearly as dire as the press is painting them.

It’s easy to forget that just a few years ago China was a closed, hard-line communist country. The vast majority of its citizens were working in rural settings that we haven’t seen here in the Western world for over a hundred years. They owned virtually nothing. Now, just a few years later, if you visit a Chinese city you’ll be hard pressed know who is a citizen and who is a visitor by how they dress and what they carry.

My close friend, Elizabethe Kramer, one of the industry’s top Agile consultants, just returned from a two month business trip to China. She spent almost the entire time, from before Thanksgiving to the middle of January, in Shenzhen. She did not visit the Foxconn factories or have any dealings with Apple. She did, however, work extensively inside ZTE, a very large Chinese telecommunications company. And she shared her observations with me.

Elizabethe told me about the team of over 100 developers that she introduced to Agile concepts. She noted that they were all highly educated, almost all with college degrees and many with masters degrees. They did not, however, speak English, and she had to rely on her partner for translation. She was impressed by their friendliness, their love of all things American and Western, and their “sweetness.” She also noted that both the individuals and the larger enterprise were “highly inefficient.” “The city and buildings are new and modern, but they’re not well designed or had much thought put into them for how they’d be used.”

ZTE workers have access to nearby apartments owned by ZTE at very low rates compared to Western standards. The workers on Elizabethe’s team were all very young, but almost all married, with the requisite one child, and part of a two income, multi-generation family living in a 2-3 bedroom apartment. ZTE provides free busing to and from work and a four-story cafeteria (with the top floor being table service) for workers. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are served to over 12,000 employees daily. Elizabethe ate there as well and said meals were typically under $2 USD, which the workers claimed was a fair value.

She also noted that all workers took an extended lunch break and “siesta” lasting from one and a half to two and a half hours. Most ate quickly and then napped on their personal cots. Workers clocked out for these breaks. When she mentioned this to other consultants who were doing business in other places in China they reported that this was the norm virtually everywhere.

Workers were required to work “overtime” Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, working from 8:30 A.M. to 8 P.M., with the aforementioned breaks. Other days they were finished by 5:30 PM and left promptly. Many also worked Saturdays and some Sundays. Since a grandmother at home dealt with child rearing and the household management, the workers didn’t seem stressed by the work requirements or complain.

By Western standards, Chinese workers are paid very low wages. She was told that the average worker in China makes only around $60 per month. Reports about Foxconn factory workers place their income around $22 per day, which, while low by Western standards, place them at much higher than average wages within China. Where Elizabethe was consulting these highly educated and trained workers were making more, but certainly nowhere close to what US workers in the telecom industry would be making.

While Elizabethe was tasked with introducing the latest Agile development strategies, she did note that workers, while intelligent, were not accustomed to thinking and acting on their own. She told me that no one could even print out any documents without special permission.

She also visited ZTE facilities in Nanjing and Shanghai and found that the company invested in creating good working environments.

As a side note, while delivering a presentation in Guangzhou, Elizabethe asked about iPhones, more to test their English comprehension than anything else. She received immediate applause and laughter. Many waived their iPhones in the air. While iPhones are expensive, they are highly desired, as are all Apple products. I queried my daughter’s freshman college roommate, also from China, about her new Macbook Pro and asked about what her friends used. She gave me a blank look and told me, “everyone uses Apple.” I interpreted that as meaning all of her friends from relatively wealthy families use Apple products, but I take it as a sign that this massive market is ripe for Apple expansion. Elizabethe also said she saw no Android phones or cases for them while the stall were filled with iPhone cases, including this incredibly wonderful one. No Blackberries, either.

Do workers in Foxconn factories who build products for Apple, Dell, HP, and others, work long hours at tedious tasks? Yes they do. Do they work for a fraction of what a worker in the US, Japan, or even Korea would? Yes they do?

Are they being enslaved? Clearly, they are not.

I suspect that a lot of the heat from the recent press comes from a lack of understanding about Chinese culture, their rapid change from manual agrarian life to high-tech manufacturing, and the significant differences and scales of our economies. I certainly do not approve of abusing workers, but I do not think one can insist on universal pay scales and work limitations immediately. While I have no direct experience with Apple’s supplier responsibility programs, I do have experience with other major retailers’ programs. Companies like Apple work hard to make changes, improve conditions, and develop relationships that can, over time, change entire industries, countries, and cultures.

An Observer From Shenzhen—Thoughts on Apple’s Recent Bad Press is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

This Required Listening contribution is from Penny Mattern. In today’s recommendation she make case for an original musical and visual work in what may become a significant future musical genre.

———————————

A friend of mine some years ago, a software engineer, told me about a video he had seen and had been mightily impressed by, named Pipe Dreams. Not only was it visually and musically clever on its face, but to him, the real clincher was that the animation was written to be driven by the music.

While Animusic and Animusic 2, DVD albums of music animation, were being developed, there were, as I understand it, basically two guys behind the effort: one who wrote the music and the animation software, and one who conceived and produced the graphics, instruments, motions, etc.

Read more about Animusic and the two albums at http://www.animusic.com.

While I don’t know whose job was the more difficult, I do know that I love these albums. They are not just novelties, they are not just ‘music videos,’ they are something more, something worth seeing and hearing.

Please, find and buy or borrow these albums and listen to them and watch them. It’s a visual experience and a musical one. Each piece is different musically and visually. Astonishing, amazing, must see and hear.

You can download and play two HD pieces from Animusic 2 here.

More Required Listening

Required Listening: And Now For Something Entirely Different: Animusic is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

I am so predictable.

When Apple released the 6th generation of the iPod Nano and Steve Jobs joked that people would start wearing them as watches, I instantly went on alert. It made perfect sense. And very soon many adapters/bands/cases became available to do just that. I’ll review one later this week.

But I drew a deep breath, told myself, “You don’t need one of those,” and went about my business. I lusted after them frequently, but it the inner demand never raised itself to an outright requirement.

Until one fell into my lap. Literally.

Recently Apple recalled the 1st generation iPod Nanos for some battery problem. I noted it in passing, paying special attention when the reports indicated that after initially replacing the recalled units with 1st gen models they quickly ran out and began suppling owners with current generation models. Interesting.

And then my oldest daughter brought me a box of cables and adapters to deal with or dispose of. In the box was her 1st generation iPod Nano.

And a few weeks later, I had a brand new (OK, probably factory refurbished, which is actually better than new) iPod Nano.

After playing with it for a few moments, I bought it off my daughter and ordered a watch conversion kit.

It is both very cool and not a very good watch. And I think that Mr. Jobs wasn’t joking as much as he was conducting a wide scale experiment. He was prototyping the future and letting us do the testing.

Once it’s on my wrist, I have to push a button to display the time. I immediately had a flashback to a Timex digital watch I had in the mid-1970s. You had to press a button to see the glowing readout digits. That is not very convenient. But my new watch displays an elegant face or any of the 18 available, including a classic Mickey Mouse watch face. That’s very cool. Frankly, even when dark it looks great on my wrist.

What’s even better it that it’s a touch screen. A very nicely sized touchscreen. I can swipe to display the other built-in apps. You can load up pictures, music (it is an iPod), listen to the radio using headphones, and track your walking or running progress with the Nike+ app. I’ve found myself using it to listen to the radio, podcasts, and tracking my daily steps (I’ve been falling short of the standard 10,000 steps per day and working on that).

All of that is very cool. It’s comfortable to wear, looks good, and provides interesting and useful functions.

But it’s not a great watch. It needs to be charged every few days. You have to press the button to see the time. You can’t add new apps. And most important: it looks like a sports watch but it is in no way water proof or water resistant and it’s not built for active wear. Don’t get it wet and don’t knock it into things.

Frankly, I like wearing watches. I wear no other jewelry and I’m used to having a watch on my left wrist. But now I work mainly from home and I always have my iPhone in my pocket. I don’t need a watch to tell the time. Using the iPod Nano as a watch puts something comfortably on my wrist and it adds functions. Useful function.

I like the classy watch display and access to other features right on my wrist. I have almost all of the same functions (except the radio) on my iPhone, so my net gain is minimal, but there’s something about wearing it versus carrying it. I’m not quite sure what the different is, but it is changing the way I think about this particular technology. It feels right.

I still wear my old, cheep and tough Timex Explorer watch and I have two dressier watches that rarely make it to my wrist. This one is fun to wear, and at least for now, I’m really enjoying getting a glimpse of the future of computing and access.

What future?

Imagine this: a new device that has the exact same size and shape as the iPod Nano, but it is completely sealed. The watch face, or whatever you choose, is displayed continually—no buttons to push to light the display. There are no holes, ports, or openings. In fact, it is waterproof to 30 meters. It wirelessly connects to sync music, photos, and more, and to connect to wireless headphones. It recharges itself through the movement and heat of your body and the light it receives through its screen. It’s a tough little solid-state piece of hardware.

And it’s Siri voice controlled. It is, in fact, an iPhone. And it is always online.

It’s also the digital key that makes any Mac or iOS device YOUR device with all of your software, settings, and files.

Wear this device, then pick up a nearby iPad. When you enter your passkey, it’s your personal iPad. And it’s connected to the Internet, through your watch. Sit down at a Mac and you have the same thing, if you want it.

This form factor is ideal. It’s something that almost everyone can wear on the wrist, clip to clothes, or slip into a pocket or bag. It is inconsequentially small. If it’s lost or stolen, it’s relatively useless without your passkey, and because it’s wireless, you could wipe it remotely. I’d prefer a Mission Impossible-style self destruct, but the lawyers would probably overrule that. Pity.

I don’t see the future as being iPhones or iPads or even Macs in their current incarnation. I see it as a largely cloud computing, ubiquitous access future where virtually anything, anywhere, can be your interface, your personal work  environment, and provide access to all your stuff. We’ll just need some token, some object, that will connect and identify us.

The iPod Nano feels just right to being the thing that connects us.

Wearing An iPod Nano As A Watch And Prototyping The Future is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

Writers start all sorts of projects. Some, perhaps many of those projects just don’t work out.

How do you know when you should abandon a project? Here’s the simple answer: never. Just put it in drawer and wait for its time. You might have a great idea, but you don’t know enough about the subject yet. You might have a wonderful thought, but other things are driving you, holding on to more of your attention. It’s OK to stop. It’s OK to put it in your file drawer. Maybe a better time will be right down the road.

The more complex answer is this: don’t give up too soon.

Every writer will encounter roadblocks, and one of the first of those is showing your work to others. That can often result in what feels like a cruel slap in the face when you hear their first reactions. There’s a simple remedy to this: don’t share your work before it’s ready, but when it’s ready, listen to what people have to say. This will likely help you. Take a deep breath and start again.

There are times when something you’ve started simply isn’t coming together. It doesn’t hold your interest or excite you the way the initial idea did. That’s OK. Put it in the drawer for a month or so, then look again. Good writers come up with lots of ideas. It’s only those things that keep demanding your attention that you should work on. Let everything else stand aside.

I’ve abandoned some big projects. Years ago I wrote three quarters of a mystery novel, then shelved it. It’s possible that I’ll bring it out someday and rewrite it from the start. Likely, even. A couple of years back I wrote a complete comedic time travel novel, but once I finished it I found that I didn’t have enough interest to do the necessary work on it. Not yet, anyway. Plays sometimes take years to percolate through my mental plumbing.

The decision of when to walk away and when to double down is completely yours. I’d urge you to not give up too easily, too soon. This latest play I’ve been wrestling with has been wrestling back for five or six years (I’ve done other work since), and I can feel it getting closer. I am not losing interest or wondering if it will work out. The struggle is part of the creative process.

So struggle. Then walk away and come back another day, refreshed, and do the work.

The Writer’s Notebook: When To Abandon A Project is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

The other day I set myself the task of assembling a new piece of furniture. I spent several minutes in quiet meditation before I started, knowing that I had a frustrating job in front of me. Not the job of putting the cabinet together. No, that wouldn’t be a problem. What typically is the nightmare for me is trying to understand the instructions.

Fledgling writers are often advised to read great writing, but I think there’s something to be gained from reading the bad stuff, too. You won’t find much worse than assembly instructions or user manuals. The one for the cabinet I assembled was clearly not written by someone with English as a first language. In fact, I am pretty sure the instructions were written in Chinese or Korean and then translated. Really badly translated. So badly that I suspect that the instructions were a cruel practical joke. Very funny, guys. Please stop it.

But there’s an opportunity for the writer here, and that’s today’s Writing Assignment.

For today’s assignment, rewrite a set of assembly instructions or a section of a badly written user guide.

Look for those user guides that come with software or virtually every piece of equipment or tool you buy, even furniture assembly guides. Collect them up and read through them with a highlighter and red pen. Mark up everything you find confusing, a missed step, a bad reference. Seek out the poorly translated piece of mangled English. An even better approach is to keep your red pen and highlighter handy as you use the supplied instructions to perform the task or assemble the object, noting every point that is assumed, unclear, confusing,  has mangled English or is outright wrong.

Then rewrite it. If you’re using a manual, just focus on a single unclear or badly written section.

After you’ve finished, use your new instructions and perform the task. Are your instructions better?

Doing this assignment will give you a feel for what technical writing is about. Do this often enough and you’ll develop a valuable job skill.

Click here to view and complete previous writing assignments.

And buy a copy of the Writing Assignments book!

Writing Assignment: Rewrite Installation Instructions is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

This iPhone case is so full of win that I can barely keep from giggling just looking at it.

Perhaps the best iPhone case ever made, or even imagined.

A good friend of mine, Elizabethe Kramer, just returned from a two month business trip in China and she bought this just for me. She and her husband Steve were also sporting new iPhone cases, each fascinatingly, bizarrely pirate in their own way.

Mine, of course, is pirated and knocked off in so many ways that it is comical, but the image itself is some sort of bizarre genius.

First, it comes in a box claiming to be a recognizable designer brand, “Marc” by Marc Jacobs.

The case features Steve Jobs, carrying a satchel and armed with an assault rifle, as he strides confidently across post-apocolyptic New York (it took me a few minutes to recognize Will Smith from “I Am Legend” with Steve’s head pasted on). The case is signed by Jobs in silvery marker. And, for some reason, if you hold the case just right you can make out overlapping hearts and Apple logos which include the following message:

Thank you Steve Jobs you will always live in our hearts.

I've never thought of Steve this way, but some how it makes complete sense.

Repeated four times. In different sizes. All run together.

The picture simply can’t do it justice. The silvery backing makes it difficult to see in detail. You have to study it, turn it into the light, to reveal its full beauty and wonder.

Unfortunately (or perhaps not), it is so poorly made that I to use as a case would quickly destroy it. So it will remain, pristine and unused, in its knockoff designer box.

I have a deep and working knowledge of physical pirating and knockoffs and the dangers that they represent. I spent three years as Vice President of Operations of a hardware refurbishing company and we developed a detailed program of identifying and destroying counterfeit routers, switches, and networking hardware of all kinds. It’s a significant issue. But this little iPhone case isn’t really a pirated item (except for the box it came in). It’s more of a bad translation, a view of our world through different eyes. It’s more sweet and creative than a direct attempt to steal someone’s copyrighted and patented goods.

I will treasure it always.

Quite Possibly The Best iPhone Case Ever is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

Today we’re used to buying and listening to tracks, single songs. I’m old enough to remember the time of buying 45s, singles, too. But there were always albums, complete works by musicians. Sometimes, most of the time, they were just collections of songs, especially by pop music artists. But not always. For me, the first album that fully captured my imagination as a whole thing was Stevie Wonder’s Songs In The Key Of Life.

It only takes hearing that a cappella opening to “Love’s In Need Of Love Today” and I find myself smiling, relaxing a bit, and making myself ready to listen to this incredible double album.

I was shocked to learn that Stevie Wonder is only ten years older than I am. I’ve heard his music all of my life. He’s been recording since he was eleven years old (when I was 1!) and had a string of hits as a teenager. Trust me, Stevie was no Justin Bieber. Stevie was and is the real thing, not some invented teenage heartthrob. Saying that Stevie Wonder is a gifted musician is like saying Everest is a bit of a hill.

As a teenager, I knew and loved Wonder’s Motown releases, so when Songs In The Key Of Life, a massive two album opus was released, I bought the album without hesitation. I didn’t buy a lot of albums as a kid (or have the cash to do so). This was the honest to god extended play vinyl album and I still have it. I played it over and over on our huge console stereo system and on the cheap yellow plastic Sears record player in my room. I took it to college with me and played it ceaselessly there. And when it became available on CD, I bought that, too.

This album is often listed by others as one of the best and most important pop music records in history. I tend to agree. But for me it’s more. It is a true album, something that is filled with amazing individual tracks. This album becomes something more when it’s listened to as a whole thing. That’s how Wonder designed it and man, does it work.

This album builds. I find myself starting relaxed and listening, and by the time we hit “I Wish” I am seriously grooving (which is a big deal for a middle age white guy). Then I get a breather, ready for a slow dance with “Knocks Me Off My Feet” (that song gives me goosebumps and brings tears to my eyes). When this album mellows out, it seriously mellows out. Listen to that sequence thru “Ordinary Pain,” and see for yourself, including the plaintive “Saturn”, then feel Stevie kick you back into gear with “Ebony Eyes.” I love the shifts and clear and simple changes in musical styles. Listening to Songs In The Key of Life is like viewing a gallery filled with painted masterpieces. It is a thing of perfection and more so because it is all connected.

You’ve probably heard many of the tracks of this album, but if you’ve never listened to the entire album, just as I did as a teenager, you are missing something special. Allow yourself no skipping back and forth, no special playlist version. Listen to it as if you were dropping the needle and letting the record spin. These tracks connect, so if you’re using iTunes, make sure that you play it as a gapless album and don’t use cross fading (I hate that feature anyway, never use it). I remember marveling at the original vinyl album—you could see the groove that traveled across the gaps that on other albums were true blank breaks.

Why is this album important? Because it is great, personal music that has helped define the last thirty years of popular music. There are moments of purity and outright joy inside this album. In this album there are songs, beats, and styles that reverberate in much of the music we’re listening to today.

If you are a fan of pop music, of funk, of Motown, even of Hip Hop and rap, then this should be one of your foundation albums. Michael Jackson listed it as his favorite album. That alone should make it worth a listen.

• iTunes Link
• Amazon MP3
• Amazon CD: Songs in the Key of Life
• And for good measure, Vinyl!

More Required Listening

Required Listening: Songs In The Key Of Life is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

There’s something out there, unseen, magical, pure, and powerful. If you could find it, you’d triumph in life. It could be the legendary unicorn, your destiny, the recognition of your greatness and genius.

Or it could be evidence that you’ve badly misunderstand the universe.

There is a considerable difference between dreaming and wishing. Dreaming is a way of imagining the future. Dreams can come to you unbidden. You can also daydream, directing your imagination towards success or a wonderful outcome of your hopes and dreams. You can daydream your way around pitfalls and fears. Dream and take action. That’s a path to success and getting what you want and need.

A wish is not active. A wish is the essence of passiveness. You may wish for many things. You can hope for many things that just won’t happen on their own. A powerful movie producer may see you walking down the street and decide to make you a star. A publisher might read your blog and offer you a book deal. The CIA Director may call you in to save the world.

But probably not. Unicorns, you see, simply don’t exist. Don’t let them influence your thinking.

You may feel that you deserve that terrific job, starring role, the recognition of your greatness, but no one is going to hand it to you. You have to ask for it. You have to work for it, earn it. You may have to recruit all of your friends and family and everyone you know to get you in front of the right person. Your simple virtues won’t lead them to you to lay their head in your lap and surrender.

That, as pleasant as it may seem, it not going to happen.

You will need to make things happen. No mythical creature will gallop out of the mists and offer you up wished-for delights. It will do you no good to complain that the universe is unfair, that you haven’t received your due, that someday, somehow, they’ll all recognize your greatness and inner beauty. If your thinking is influenced by unicorns such as these wishes and hopes then your lot in life will be one of disappointment. Sorry, princess.

Yes, there is magic and wonder in the world. But magicians of all kinds work incredibly hard to make it look magical and easy. Some do achieve success that’s unwarranted. The wrong people are hired, promoted, and rewarded. Bad ideas get attention. Untalented but pretty people end up on magazine covers and with recording contracts. Crime pays.

You and I will have to work for what we want. And when you do achieve your dream, your success will be sweeter, all because you earned it, not because it fell into your lap.

Blame Elijah May & Michael Schechter for the title of this post. You can blame me for everything else.

The Influence of Unicorns is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!

It’s very simple: complete transparency is a mistake.

You are not one person.

My fellow home theater enthusiasts aren’t really interested in my literary pursuits or my political beliefs. My customers aren’t particularly interested in the latest addition to my home theater or my enthusiasm for Apple products (or the stock!).

And the whole world doesn’t need to know where I am every second of the day.

I like social separation. I don’t particularly like things that try to munge together every aspect of my life. For example, I use LinkedIn cautiously. If I don’t know you personally, haven’t directly worked with you, then you’re not part of my network there. Being related to me isn’t a reason to connect with me on LinkedIn. If you’re a customer, I don’t particularly want you as a Facebook friend (and a word of warning, even if you are a Facebook friend, don’t be surprised if I don’t stay up-to-the minute on your news. I mostly ignore Facebook). Frankly, “social media” isn’t social for me. It’s a way of connecting. My social interactions are largely in person, direct, and limited.

I do like services like Path. It’s a closed social network. It has a hard limit on the number of connections, which is just fine with me. For those who are friends and family it is a wonderful way to keep lightly in touch. If you were a part of my Path (and please, don’t ask unless we have a personal relationship), you’ll see lots of pictures of the food I’m preparing or putting on my plate. For the world that would be boring, but for my friends and family, it’s a part of my life that they share.

You are not a brand. Stop confusing yourself with things. You don’t need to build a brand. You may need to establish a business side of your work, something separate from the other aspects of your life, that helps you have a conversation with people who might pay you. But if you broadcast all of the stupid things you do, how you got drunk, who you had sex with, and how bored you are at your job, I am less likely to hire you (the same goes for others who decide such things—trust me on that). I have passed over people for jobs because their broadcast personal life made them seem unreliable (one particular applicant for a job pasted their site with the job that really wanted to do, and it wasn’t even close the job they were applying for).

The opposite is also true: businesses are not people. For a business to be social, it has to be focused and friendly, but it can never be your friend. I really like Apple products, I own Apple stock, but Apple isn’t my friend. I don’t need a social relationship with the company that made my car, where I shop for food, or the local dry cleaners. I do find it useful to get news and information from them, and someone to listen and act when I have a problem, but I really don’t need another channel of happy talk from businesses.

I find that when a person is too open and social that I tend to quickly ignore them, tune them down, hide their frequent chatter. It is counterproductive for them to blast every aspect of their life to me. We’d connect better, perhaps, if we limited our conversations to our common interests.

Just like we would if we were meeting in person.

Social, But Not Completely Open is a post from: First Today, Then Tomorrow. If you enjoyed or benefited from this post, please share, tweet, or link!